Send me your light and your faithful care, let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy mountain, to the place where you dwell. Psalm 43:3
Lead, kindly light, amidst the grey and gloom The night is long and I am far from home Here in the dark, I do not ask to see The path ahead–one step enough for me Lead on, lead on, kindly light.
I was not ever willing to be led I could have stayed, but I ran instead In spite of fear, I followed my pride My eyes could see, but my heart was blind Lead on, lead on, kindly light.
And in the night, when I was afraid Your feet beside my own on the way Each stumbling step where other men have trod shortens the road leading home to my God Lead on, lead on, my God, my God, lead on, lead on, kindly light. ~Audrey Assad inspired by Ven. John Henry Cardinal Newman’s poem “Lead Kindly Light”
Once in awhile, I awake in a windstorm-tossed night, in pitch blackness with no flashlight within reach.
The familiar path to bathroom and kitchen becomes obstacle course, full of places to trip and stub my toes and bump my head.
Illumination for just the next step is all I need.
A small circle of light that shows where to safely put my foot.
You, Lord, come alongside You, Lord, make the dark less fearsome You, Lord, are that safe and kindly light that shows me where to step next. One step at a time, one again, and then another…
This year’s Lenten theme: So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2 Corinthians 4: 18
To the shepherd herding his flock through the gorge below, it must appear as if I walk on the sky. I feel that too: so little between me
and The Fall. But this is how faith works its craft. One foot set in front of the other, while the wind rattles the cage of the living and the rocks down there
cheer every wobble, your threads keep this braided business almost intact saying: Don’t worry. I’ve been here a long time. You’ll make it across. ~Matthew Olzmann “Letter to a Bridge Made of Rope”
I have never walked a rope bridge though I’ve seen one from a distance in Northern Ireland. It swayed far above a rocky gorge, hanging almost miraculously in the air as walkers trekked blithely across.
Not for me, I said.
I feel disoriented and dizzy when the surface beneath my feet sways and moves with the wind and due to my own movement. I make my own wobbling worse with my fear. The rocks below seem menacing; I don’t trust my own ability to navigate over and through them.
Oh, me of little faith. So little between me and The Fall.
Simply crossing a narrow wooden bridge built over a fallen large old-growth tree trunk takes all my courage. I try to focus on my feet taking each step, testing the solid wood beneath me rather than looking down at the rushing water and sharp rocks below.
In the course of life, I have to take steps that feel uncertain and unsupported. I freeze in place, afraid to move forward, reluctant to leave the security of where I am to do what it takes to get safely to the other side.
Yet I need to trust what holds firm for others will hold firm for me.
Christ is the bridge for those like me who fear, who don’t trust their own feet, who can’t stop seeing the taunting and daunting rocks below. He has braided Himself around me to keep me safe, no matter what and no matter where. He’s been here a long time and will always be.
I can step out in that confidence.
This year’s Lenten theme: So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2 Corinthians 4: 18
Loving shepherd of Thy sheep, Keep Thy lamb, in safety keep; Nothing can Thy power withstand, None can pluck me from Thy hand.
I will praise Thee everyday, Gladly Thy all will obey; Like Thy ones blessed above, Happy in Thy presence love.
Loving shepherd, ever near, Teach Thy lamb Thy voice to hear; Suffer not my steps to stray, From the straight and narrow way.
Where Thou leadest I would go, Walking in Thy steps below; Till before my Father’s throne, I shall know as I am known.
Let nothing disturb you, nothing frighten you, all things are passing.
God never changes. Patience obtains all things. Whoever has God lacks nothing. God is enough. ~The Prayer of St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)
Occasionally I have sleepless nights when the worries of my waking hours weigh heavily on my mind. Almost anything can feel more overwhelming at night, as I struggle to see clarity in the dark through my tears. Even in broad daylight, the puzzle pieces of my life may well seem scattered, making no logical pattern or sense. I can feel as random as pebbles shifting and tossed by waves on a beach.
In those helpless moments, I must remember if I have God, I lack nothing. This too shall pass. God does not change, even as I brace against the waves of life which turn me over and over, end for end, smoothing my rough edges, often leaving me somewhere new.
Patience, patience.
He is enough for now, for today, for tonight, for tomorrow, for ever.
photo by Josh Scholten
This year’s Lenten theme: So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.2 Corinthians 4: 18
Let nothing trouble you, Let nothing frighten you, Everything is fleeting, God alone is unchanging, Patience can obtain everything, The one who possesses God wants for nothing: God alone suffices
All day the stars watch from long ago my mother said I am going now when you are alone you will be all right whether or not you know you will know look at the old house in the dawn rain all the flowers are forms of water the sun reminds them through a white cloud touches the patchwork spread on the hill the washed colors of the afterlife that lived there long before you were born see how they wake without a question even though the whole world is burning ~W.S. Merwin “Rain Light”
My childhood fear was that my parents might die young and leave me alone to fend for myself. This fear was certainly fed by nuclear threats, bomb drills at school and the Cuban missile crisis. It felt as though the world was so uncertain that even the most routine day felt fraught with the potential of a tragic ending. As an overly-sensitive eight year old, I struggled to go to school because I was certain I would not see my mother again if bombs dropped and the world ended in fire. That prospect was more terrifying than my own life ending.
It took time, and my mother’s constant reassurance, for me to settle into the reality that life is an uncertain business. Whether or not I would know what may happen that day, I would know to look for beauty and peace and renewal. Many days started with morning rain, a quiet washing away of the night’s worries and frets.
Decades later, I would be okay when she left, which she did, at dawn. I came to sit beside her for a short time, knowing she was gone, knowing I would be all right, and knowing she had given me the tools to look each uncertain day in the eye and accept it for what it was going to be.
Now, for nearly seventy years, I wake and look out at these uncertain dawns. Even though I do not know what will come next, I have been given the gift of reassurance that I will be all right.
And so will you.
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When faced with navigating an icy path ahead of me, I am rendered helpless. An icy path on a slope is even more intimidating.
Our farm is located on a hill, which is wonderful 50+ weeks out of the year, but in winter during arctic wind flow days, plus rain or sleet, it becomes a skating rink on an incline. Even the best traction devices won’t keep me on my feet.
I’m thankful my husband has much better balance than I do, but even the last ice storm was even too much for him. We don’t have much choice but to slide and crawl to our barnyard destination to complete our chores. It is exceedingly humbling to be brought to our knees, but that has always been the best position for sorely needed prayer and petition.
We pray to keep our aging bones intact. We pray to keep our backs and noggins functional. We pray for the thaw to come soon.
Despite an unsure landing for each footstep, there is nothing to do but keep going. So we do.
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Instead of depression, try calling it hibernation. Imagine the darkness is a cave in which you will be nurtured by doing absolutely nothing. Hibernating animals don’t even dream. It’s okay if you can’t imagine Spring. Sleep through the alarm of the world. Name your hopelessness a quiet hollow, a place you go to heal, a den you dug, Sweetheart, instead of a grave. ~Andrea Gibson “Instead of Depression” from You Better Be Lightning
We didn’t say fireflies but lightning bugs. We didn’t say carousel but merry-go-round. Not seesaw, teeter-totter not lollipop, sucker. We didn’t say pasta, but spaghetti, macaroni, noodles: the three kinds. We didn’t get angry: we got mad. And we never felt depressed dismayed, disappointed disheartened, discouraged disillusioned or anything, even unhappy: just sad. ~Sally Fisher “Where I Come From” from Good Question.
…if you could distinguish finer meanings within “Awesome” (happy, content, thrilled, relaxed, joyful, hopeful, inspired, prideful, adoring, grateful, blissful.. .), and fifty shades of “Crappy” (angry, aggravated, alarmed, spiteful, grumpy, remorseful, gloomy, mortified, uneasy, dread-ridden, resentful, afraid, envious, woeful, melancholy.. .), your brain would have many more options for predicting, categorizing, and perceiving emotion, providing you with the tools for more flexible and functional responses. ~Lisa Feldman Barrett from How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain
Our own experience with loneliness, depression, and fear can become a gift for others, especially when we have received good care. As long as our wounds are open and bleeding, we scare others away. But after someone has carefully tended to our wounds, they no longer frighten us or others…. We have to trust that our own bandaged wounds will allow us to listen to others with our whole being. That is healing. — Henri Nouwen from Bread for the Journey
If there is anything I came to understand over the decades I served as a primary care physician, it is that every person experiences painful emotions that make them miserable, making it even more difficult to share with others. Sometimes those feelings build up such pressure that they leak out of our cells as physical symptoms: headaches, muscle tightness, stomach upset, hypertension. Other times they are so overwhelming we can no longer function in a day to day way – described clinically as rage, panic, mood disorder, depression, self-destructive, suicidal.
Somehow we’ve lost permission to be sad. Just sad. Sometimes unbearably, hopelessly sad.
Sadness happens to us all, some longer than others, some worse than others, some deeper than others. What makes sadness more real and more manageable is if we can say it out loud — whatever ‘sad’ means to us on a given day and if we describe our feelings in detail, explaining to others who can understand because they’ve been there too, then they can listen and help.
Painful emotions don’t always need a “fix” in the short term, particularly chemical, but that is why I was usually consulted. Alcohol, marijuana and other self-administered drugs tend to be the temporary anesthesia that people seek to stop feeling anything at all but it can erupt even stronger later.
Sometimes an overwhelming feeling just needs an outlet so it no longer is locked up, unspoken and silent, threatening to leak out in ways that tear us up and pull us apart.
Sometimes we need a healing respite/hibernation, with permission to sleep through the world’s alarms for a time. At times, medical management with antidepressants can be incredibly helpful along with talk therapy.
It helps to find words to express how things felt before this sadness, where you are now in the midst of it and where you wish you could be rather than being swallowed by sorrow. Healing takes time and like anything else that is broken, it hurts as it repairs. Armed with that self-knowledge and some gentle compassion, tomorrow and the next day and the next might feel a little less hopeless and overwhelming.
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Years ago in the Hebrides, I remember an old man who walked every morning on the grey stones to the shore of baying seals, who would press his hat to his chest in the blustering salt wind and say his prayer to the turbulent Jesus hidden in the water,
and I think of the story of the storm and everyone waking and seeing the distant yet familiar figure far across the water calling to them
and how we are all preparing for that abrupt waking, and that calling, and that moment we have to say yes, except it will not come so grandly so Biblically but more subtly and intimately in the face of the one you know you have to love
so that when we finally step out of the boat toward them, we find everything holds us, and everything confirms our courage, and if you wanted to drown you could, but you don’t because finally after all this struggle and all these years you simply don’t want to any more you’ve simply had enough of drowning and you want to live and you want to love and you will walk across any territory and any darkness however fluid and however dangerous to take the one hand you know belongs in yours. ~David Whyte from “TrueLove” in The Sea in You
When the mystery of God’s love breaks through into my consciousness, do I run from it? Or am I virgin enough to respond from my deepest, truest self, and say a “yes” that will change me forever? ~Kathleen Norris from Amazing Grace – A Vocabulary of Faith
Again and again, we are called to do something that takes all our courage – we feel we will sink and drown, perishing in our humiliation, our weakness, our sheer lack of faith in what we are able to accomplish.
Eventually, we tire of the fear of drowning so we just say yes to the invitation to do this hard thing and we take the hand that guides us home.
He calls on us to trust He’ll reach out and hold us up when our faith, and our feet, waver and stumble.
We are not left to drown.
This year’s Advent theme “Dawn on our Darkness” is taken from this 19th century Christmas hymn:
Brightest and best of the sons of the morning, dawn on our darkness and lend us your aid. Star of the east, the horizon adorning, guide where our infant Redeemer is laid. ~Reginald Heber -from “Brightest and Best”
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It’s in the perilous boughs of the tree out of blue sky the wind sings loudest surrounding me.
And solitude, a wild solitude ’s reveald, fearfully, high I’d climb into the shaking uncertainties,
part out of longing, part daring my self, part to see that widening of the world, part
to find my own, my secret hiding sense and place, where from afar all voices and scenes come back
—the barking of a dog, autumnal burnings, far calls, close calls— the boy I was calls out to me
here the man where I am “Look! I’ve been where you most fear to be.” ~Robert Duncan “Childhood’s Retreat”
And this is where we went, I thought, Now here, now there, upon the grass Some forty years ago.
The days being short now, simply I had come To gaze and look and stare upon The thought of that once endless maze of afternoons. But most of all I wished to find the places where I ran
What’s happened to our boys that they no longer race And stand them still to contemplate Christ’s handiwork: His clear blood bled in syrups from the lovely wounded trees? Why only bees and blackbird winds and bending grass? No matter. Walk. Walk, look, and sweet recall.
I came upon an oak where once when I was twelve I had climbed up and screamed for Skip to get me down. It was a thousand miles to earth. I shut my eyes and yelled. My brother, richly compelled to mirth, gave shouts of laughter And scaled up to rescue me. “What were you doing there?” he said. I did not tell. Rather drop me dead. But I was there to place a note within a squirrel nest On which I’d written some old secret thing now long forgot.
{Now} I lay upon the limb a long while, thinking. I drank in all the leaves and clouds and weathers Going by as mindless As the days. What, what, what if? I thought. But no. Some forty years beyond!
I brought forth: The note.
I opened it. For now I had to know. I opened it, and wept. I clung then to the tree And let the tears flow out and down my chin. Dear boy, strange child, who must have known the years And reckoned time and smelled sweet death from flowers In the far churchyard. It was a message to the future, to myself. Knowing one day I must arrive, come, seek, return. From the young one to the old. From the me that was small And fresh to the me that was large and no longer new. What did it say that made me weep?
I remember you. I remember you. ~Ray Bradbury from “Remembrance”
Not long ago, we drove the country roads where I grew up, over sixty years later, and though some trees are taller, and others cut down – it looked just as I remembered. The scattered houses on farms still standing, a bit more worn, the fields open and flowing as always, the turns and bends, the ups and downs of the asphalt lanes unchanged where once I tread with bicycle tires and sneakered feet.
My own childhood home a different color but so familiar as we drive slowly by, full of memories of laughter and games, long winter days and longer summer evenings full of its share of angry words and tears and eventual forgiveness.
I too left notes to my future self, in old barns, and lofts, and yes, in trees, but won’t go back to retrieve them. I remember what I wrote. My young heart tried to imagine itself decades hence, with so much to fear – bomb drills and shelters in the ground, such anxiety and joy would pass through me like pumping blood, wondering what wounds would I bear and bleed, what love and tears would trace my aging face?
I have not forgotten that I wish to be remembered.
No, I have never forgotten that I remember that child: this is me, as I was, and, deep down, still am.
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A blue horse turns into a streak of lightning, then the sun — relating the difference between sadness and the need to praise that which makes us joyful, I can’t calculate how the earth tips hungrily toward the sun – then soaks up rain — or the density of this unbearable need to be next to you. It’s a palpable thing — this earth philosophy and familiar in the dark like your skin under my hand. We are a small earth. It’s no simple thing. Eventually we will be dust together; can be used to make a house, to stop a flood or grow food for those who will never remember who we were, or know that we loved fiercely. Laughter and sadness eventually become the same song turning us toward the nearest star — a star constructed of eternity and elements of dust barely visible in the twilight as you travel east. I run with the blue horses of electricity who surround the heart and imagine a promise made when no promise was possible. ~Joy Harjo “Promise of Blue Horses” from How We Became Human
Birds embody the shapes of my heart these days
holding the warmth of a hug in their feathers
the gleam of a kiss in their eyes
building a home for my love in their beaks
and spreading, with their song, the promise of blue horses.
“A blue horse turns into a streak of lightning, then the sun— relating the difference between sadness and the need to praise that which makes us joyful.” ~Marjorie Moorhead, “That Which Makes Us Joyful” from Literary North
Even when my heart isn’t feeling it, especially when I’m blue (along with much of the rest of the world on this September 11 anniversary), I need to remember to whisper hymns of praise to the Creator of all that is blue as well as every other color.
I’m reminded of the goodness of a God who provides me with the words to sing and a voice to sing them out loud.
That reality alone makes me joyful. That alone is reason to worship Him. That alone is enough to turn blue days, blue horses and blue hearts gold again.
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When I was five, my father, who loved me, ran me over with a medium-sized farm tractor.
I was lucky though; I tripped and slipped into a small depression, which caused the wheels to tread
lightly on my leg, which had already been broken (when I was three) by a big dog, who liked to play rough,
and when I was nine, I fell from the second-floor balcony onto the cement by the back steps,
and as I went down I saw my life go by and thought: “This is exactly how Wiley Coyote feels, every time!”
Luckily, I mostly landed on my feet, and only had to go on crutches for a few months in the fifth grade—
and shortly after that, my father, against his better judgment, bought the horse I’d wanted for so long.
All the rest of my luck has to do with highways and ice—things that could have happened, but didn’t. ~Joyce Sutphen, “My Luck” from First Words.
at twenty
I understand catastrophic thinking, particularly when “in the moment” tragedies play out real-time in the palm of my hand and I feel helpless to do anything but watch it unfold.
Those who know me well know I fret and worry better than most. Medical training only makes this worse. I’m taught to first think disastrously. That is what I have done for a living: to always be ready for the worse case scenario and simply assume it will happen.
Sometimes it does happen and no amount of wishing it away will work.
When I rise to face a day of uncertainty as we all must do every morning~ after careful thought, I reach for the certainty I am promised over the uncertainty I can only imagine:
What is my only comfort in life and in death? That I am not my own, but belong —body and soul, in life and in death— to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.
“Supposing it didn’t” — says our Lord (and we are comforted by this) but even if it did … even if it did – as awful things sometimes do – we are never left on our own to deal with it.
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